This invention generally relates to means and methods for securing motor vehicles to support structures such as cargo containers, and more specifically, to a wheel harness and a method for mounting a wheel harness on a wheel that may be used for this purpose.
Motor vehicles are occasionally shipped individually or in small groups by truck, railroad or ship, or some combination thereof. For instance, if a person moves from Europe to the west coast of the United States, that person may have a car delivered by ship from Europe to the east coast, transferred to a railroad car, and then carried to the west coast in the railroad car. There are a number of disadvantages associated with the conventional means and methods used to ship small numbers of vehicles.
For example, when carried by ship, the vehicles are normally held in the cargo hold of a freighter, without being stored in any type of crate or container that can be locked and sealed, and it is difficult to prevent theft or pilferage of these open shipments. In addition, often more than one mode of transportation is used to deliver a particular vehicle; and in order to do this with conventional prior art delivery arrangements, the vehicle must be unsecured from one carrier, individually transferred to another carrier, and then resecured to the new carrier. This is difficult and time consuming, and occasionally causes damage to the vehicle.
Standardized cargo containers that can be locked and sealed and that can be handled by and readily transferred between all three above-mentioned modes of transportation have not been utilized to any great extent to ship small numbers of vehicles. In part this is because cargo containers had to be specially manufactured or extensively modified to receive and securely hold motor vehicles, and it is not efficient or economical to provide such containers whenever a small number of vehicles are being shipped.
In addition to the foregoing, prior art arrangements for securing vehicles in or on a carrier commonly employ metal chains or cables to attach the frames of the vehicles directly to the carrier frame. These securing chains or cables are expensive, and they are usually quite heavy, adding to the weight that the carrier vehicle must transport. Further, these conventional securing devices may cause damage to the transported vehicle, either while being installed, because of improper tensioning of the devices, or because of stresses resulting from shifting of the vehicles in transit. Moreover, the conventional securing devices are often difficult and time consuming to attach and may not be easily adaptable to vehicles of different sizes.
U.S Pat. No. 4,479,746 shows a lightweight wheel harness which is mounted on the wheel of a vehicle and secured to a container floor to secure the vehicle thereto. This harness does not require any metal chains or cables to attach the harness to the vehicle wheel, and the harness may be used with cargo containers that can be carried by truck, railroad or ship. It has been found, however, that, in use, this wheel harness tends to come off the wheel on which it is mounted as a result of normal vibrations that occur as the vehicle is transported in the cargo container.